Chimps in St. Lucie sanctuary get mobile clinic

The Fort Pierce-based chimpanzee sanctuary performed first procedure in renovated RV on Thursday.

Patty, a chimp at the Save The Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, wakes up in a transport container before going back into her housing facility in the sanctuary following a medical procedure. Patty was treated by the veterinarian staff inside a new mobile vet unit parked right outside her home building rather than being transported to an outside facility, which helps reduce stress on the chimps.

Jocelyn Bezner, left, a veterinarian at Save The Chimps sanctuary, and vet tech Kendra Adkins perform diagnostic tests on the sedated chimp named Patty, checking on a skin rash while inside the sanctuary’s new mobile vet unit on Thursday. The custom built mobile vet unit was financed by a $100,000 grant from an anonymous foundation.

FORT PIERCE — You've probably heard of a mobile veterinarian clinic for dogs and cats, but how about for chimpanzees?

Patty, a 17-year-old chimpanzee who lives at the 150-acre Save the Chimps sanctuary in western St. Lucie County, was the first chimp Thursday to get a medical procedure done in the organization's new mobile-vet clinic.

The mobile unit, a rebuilt recreational vehicle for camping and painted with colorful chimp murals, arrived last week at the sanctuary from New Mexico.

The clinic, which took 1 1/2 years to build, was paid for through a $100,000 grant from an anonymous donor. The clinic was a dream of Save the Chimps founder, the late Dr. Carole Noon.

"Dr. Noon had this vision, of course, that chimpanzees, it should be all about them," said Save the Chimps veterinarian Jocelyn Bezner. "What she noticed was when we're sedating chimps to do procedures that they got a lot more stressed if we took them away from their family unit. So, what she said was, ‘Why can't we have a hospital that comes to them?' And I said, ‘Well, I guess we can.' "

Patty has had a mild skin condition since she was 7 years old, which causes her to break out into an itchy rash, Bezner said. She's on chronic medications.

The 187 chimps at the sanctuary came from the now-shuttered Coulston Foundation animal testing lab in Alamogordo, N.M., which Save the Chimps renovated and took over in 2002 after the lab went bankrupt. The chimps now get to live out their lives on 3-acre islands surrounded by moats of water.

The facility is not open to the public.

Bezner sedated Patty at 8:30 a.m. Thursday to check the moderate rash on her back — making sure she didn't have an infection. Patty's island mate, Thoto, could watch from behind a protective barrier.

"What we find is if we can sedate a chimpanzee at their building within sight of their fellow island mates, then the chimp that we're sedating is a lot less stressed, and the group is a lot less stressed," Bezner said. "When we used to take the chimp away to do a procedure, there was a lot of screaming and crying and banging. When we do it at the building, it's totally quiet."

Before the clinic arrived, chimps were driven to other buildings on the property to receive medical treatments.

GOOD MIGRATIONS

• There are 89 chimpanzees left at the Save the Chimps location in Alamogordo, N.M.

• A migration of 10 chimps is scheduled to arrive at Save the Chimps' St. Lucie County sanctuary at the end of June.

• It costs $25,000 to relocate 10 chimps. Next month's group is fully sponsored.

• Save the Chimps' goal is to relocate three more groups of 10 chimps from New Mexico to Florida in late summer. The organization needs donors to help sponsor the three migrations.

• The goal is to have all of the remaining chimps in New Mexico relocated to Florida by early next year. For more information about Save the Chimps, including ways to donate to the relocation project, call (772) 429-0403 or check out www.SaveTheChimps.org.